The Book of Water
by HayashiOkami
Summary: The first Program fifty years ago. What sort of state was the world in for such a horrible thing to happen? Hadn't their innocence already been taken away by war? A group of war-weary survivors and lifetime friends cannot, will not, kill each other.
1. May 1946

_**The Book of Water**_

_The year is 1947. The surviving youths of the Republic have suffered a decline in national loyalty, pride, and unity. A national conscription commences in which approximately 2,000 schoolchildren will sacrifice their lives for the sake of national defense against the Western world. This is their mission: fight and die with honor, as their fathers and brothers had valiantly fought and died in the Second Great War._

_It is the Battle Experiment No. 68 Program._

_Fifty years from today, it will be known simply as the Program._

_**Chapter One**_

_May 1946_

_Town of Akiyama near Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture_

School reopened that spring. Underneath the weeping cherry blossoms families were reunited or buried as official condolences traveled across the country from the military headquarters. This period, traditionally a renewal of life after a harsh and unforgiving winter was damp in comparison. Recovery and stability were the national mandates, and revitalization a feeble, pretty word that belonged to no one. While families mourned over identical letters printed on stiff paper, the nation's youth rotated dusty textbooks in their hands and wondered, _why bother?_ Indeed, why bother with education?

Formal education provided no advantage during miserable battles, and intelligence a tool by which a soldier might live a day more, but thousands were still dead. And at home the undrafted had no thought or need of books while huddled in dark underground shelters or running through the blaze of an incendiary bomb. After the nation had lifted itself to a deceivingly stable position, the protests and rallies began. They were popular events in the cities, almost a social norm by the New Year.

People at the time simply didn't attend school. People he might have called his classmates before the war were preoccupied with the ticket life had allotted them. When they had a chance to escape the throes of work, they seized it. Rebuilding families, sending the youngest to elementary school for the basic necessities so that they may grow to work as well, were the main concerns of their generation. No one could _force _them to attend school if their entire generation resisted.

Their faulty logic did not last long. A new legislation declared education mandatory for all students, though it hardly impacted the weary children who could do nothing more than stare at the dilapidated school building and laugh. Should the bombings have reached their area, this school would have been converted into a refuge for the moaning and suffering citizens. Free weeds and layers of dust infested the concrete and brick structure, aging it beyond its years.

But they believed they had a reason to laugh at the ghostly windows and rusted metal piping. The volatile adults in the government had sacrificed millions of lives to win a costly war. In 1946 there was not a single person who had not lost someone of immediate relations or friendship for this rightful defense of their nation against the imperialistic West. During the rare opportunities he found to see his former classmates, he could not meet a single one who had emerged unscathed from the war.

There was a majority of young people he was not acquainted with – the ones who had migrated here to escape the bombings in industrial areas of the country. These city kids and the native country kids became the divide in their community as the strangely mannered refugees flooded into the prefecture. Through a common unity brought on by the suffering and hard times in the tide of war, at least some of those barriers had fractured and floated down the Shinano River. It was their only blessing.

Standing before each other in uniform around the dusty classroom _4B_, was somehow a different matter altogether. He would have ventured to assume that whether or not they had a basket of shriveled vegetables, a shovel, or a book bag wouldn't affect the manner in which they saw the others. All twenty-nine of his classmates shuffled on the wooden floors, uncertain and indecisive before they migrated towards old friends and alliances. Soon the rectangular classroom had been divided into the locals and the city kids. Not a single one wanted to be there, but the government had made its demands very clear.

The protests weren't any of their concern, as far as they knew. Niigata City housed the nearest source of any significant uprising, but less than a handful of them had ever stepped foot there. After that first awkward day back, almost none of them bothered attending. They chose the days they wanted to spare for the hike all the way to the junior high school, and spent class time listening to their teachers with half an ear. Most of the older high school students had been drafted and those who returned were young men working now, so the empty two-story building a mile away from the junior high continued to grow weeds.

The rare days everyone managed to attend were the days devoted to community service. Those were the field days where they and the other junior high classes walked to a designated part of town that needed work done and skipped all lessons. Gradually, the divide began to crawl back to the riverbanks where it had fallen. The slow winter season further strengthened their bonds and provided school with a meaning to its name again.

There were still no official requirements to graduate to the next grade in place. The school had enough problems staffing the building, so every student attended the ceremony that would advance them to the next academic level. It would be his last year of junior high school without attending hardly a month's worth of lessons. By this time the year was 1947. The country was in recovery, strengthening and growing. The conscription law that had claimed the lives of entire generations of people disappeared. The Republic, as they were now called, had solidified its tentative place in the world.

Then, the only black-and-white, grainy television in the school flickered in on a new legislation passed just that year. The Diet member representing Niigata stood with clasped hands and read aloud from the papers on his desk. He could hardly recall the man's words, at first interested only because it had been so long since any of them had watched television. There were a little under a hundred third year students, most of which had been transported by a rickety bus from nearby farming towns without a school. It was free study period.

_We regret that we must now sacrifice so many of our nation's youths so soon after the wounds of the past have opened,_ he faintly remembered the man's words going._ Though our lacerations are fresh, we must view this not as a death sentence, but as a noble and glorious sacrifice, in the words of our Great Dictator. Starting this year, forty-seven third year junior high school classes will be chosen from a random lottery pool to participate in the Battle Experiment No. 68 Program, in which the students must eliminate each other until there is one victor._

_The legislation has been debating over whether or not the event should be televised…_

He doubted anyone had heard anything beyond that; he had trouble remembering the exact words of the entire speech himself, no matter how impactful it was upon his life. There had been other worries in his mind, though had no recollection of those, either. Most of the kids hadn't even heard the Diet member speak over the complementary clamor, but tremors of panic manage to flicker to the ends of the crowd and soon a nervous hysteria swept the study hall. The teachers, evidently ignorant of the government's decree, struggled to calm the raging children once they had overcome their initial fears.

That's dog shit; they can't do something like that. No one would ever agree to pass such a thing. Why the heck would they want to kill off so many of their country's kids? Just because there's been a ton of protests lately doesn't give them the right to go around and pull sick jokes like this…similar and harsher words were exchanged between the classmates in the following weeks. The teachers and adults, once educated about the government's decision, eased their anxiety by stating the likelihood of being chosen even if it was serious.

That was right, everyone relaxed and reassured themselves. There were hundreds of third year junior high school classes in Japan alone, even after the war. The birthrates were expected to rise within the next decade. In addition to that, the newly admitted country of China opened that lottery pool to hundreds of other classes. Fifty was a significantly small number. And they were a small town junior high school, lucky that they had enough funds and students to function at all.

He would later learn that a large population resisted the radical changes, but their little town near Nagaoka hadn't the mind to consider protesting. Not that they blindly supported the government's every action, but they had more pressing matters to worry over. Matters, he remembered, such as food and a house to survive the harsh northern winters blown in from the Sea of Japan. The government could decree what they wanted and as always, the town would struggle and thrive.

In the intervening months, spring returned and renewed the land. Though the town's residents had no time for poetry, the teachers bribed the students with local field trips intended to restore nature's former glory to the war-weary earth. In fact, they barely deserved to be called "field trips", as their destinations were often no further than a half hour's walk away from the school. However, no one would deny that they enjoyed the rare chance when they were allowed to be children again.

Since before the war, Akiyama owned a few sparse telephones and televisions. The common family relied on the postal boys – and during the war, girls adopted the job as well – to deliver whatever messages they had to send along. The official letters from the military headquarters, however, were transmitted by men in crisp uniforms at the door. By 1947 those messages had all but disappeared. By the ninth month of the year, just after the annual school festival, two lone soldiers from the Imperial Army rolled into town carrying standard-issue firearms and a much deadlier message.

That day a gratefully light drizzle covered the town in a fine, almost hazy mist, enough to revive their precious crops withered from the summer heat. It provided them an excuse to avoid work and sit around battered desks in clusters of friends, watching the water trickle down the windowpanes. Whether they admitted it or not, the weather ruled their lives from the moment they were born or entered this rural town. The monotony that consumed their lives drew every out-of-place detail into their stark attention. Though the matter might be inconsequential and minute, they seized hold of it.

Their homeroom teacher Saito was somewhere in the building, probably chatting in the staff room with the other volunteer teachers. Due to an "unfortunate circumstance", their teacher had avoided the mandatory draft. No one saw a need to find him as they pressed their faces against the murky glass windows and peered down at the crudely paved road below. A heavy car trudged through the slick mud, some bulky thing the country kids couldn't recognize. A wave of speculative murmurs erupted from the class.

His eyes flickered to his neighbor, one of those shipped to the countryside after the first bombings struck mainland Japan, now living with distant relatives in the house nearest his. As with all the friendships forged during the war, theirs had been slow to blossom, at first nothing more than a basis of mutual suspicion and ignorance. The city boy had never worked a day in his life – and by work he meant labor in the field – so his first impression had been that of a spoiled brat. He could only imagine what his friend had once thought of him.

The moment the car rolled into view he instantly glanced at his friend to gauge his reaction. That was within human nature, he supposed, to evaluate whether or not the crowd had the same sentiments for a given situation, a strange one in particular. The musing hadn't crossed his mind in the slightest when he saw the pallid complexion on his friend's relatively pale face. A few months under the summer sun had darkened him a considerable amount. Not only his skin tone, but his eyes also disturbed him.

Those were the haunted eyes of someone who had seen things. They were a frightened rabbit's glimmering pupils in the vestige of death, body stiff as if it were a statue or a frozen corpse. He was sure that if everyone in that classroom had stared into his friend's face for a few solid seconds, they would have ceased all excited movement as well. The other city kids were mildly discomforted when they saw the car downstairs, but none reacted so strongly.

"Natsume, what's wrong?" he asked his friend. It took a few seconds for him to process and to comprehend his own name. The boy with his fair looks and somewhat thin stature blinked as the fright melted from his eyes. A faint remnant of disturbance remained, but his body had relaxed already. He offered a normal smile and waved the concern away as the class returned to their clusters, the excitement gone from sight. He swung Natsume around by his shoulders and pushed him into a chair. Still somewhat perturbed and half amazed, he said, "Wasn't that strange? I've never seen a car like that before."

"It's a military issued car. You didn't see one when your dad was drafted?" Natsume inquired, though he appeared as if he wished to retract that question the instant it left his lips, for all the unpleasant memories it must have held. Both boys and their classmates in the immediate vicinity quieted. Evidently, most of them hadn't made the connection that the car had been from the military. Of course they wouldn't, he thought.

"They had to go to Nagaoka to get picked up," he replied. The nearest city wasn't too far away, and there was a convenient train that ran through the land near the western edge of town. Most people avoided the train tracks now, if they could help it. While running on a decent schedule it still only passed through the town twice a day. He remembered endless childhood days spent playing between those ribs of steel laced with grass and weeds.

"But why is it here, of all places?"

Natsume shrugged, hardly having more extensive knowledge than his own on the subject of the military and how it functioned. It was no remarkable feat to recognize an army car, as it was no sign of strength to lift an autumn hair. There was any number of reasons for it to roll through town, none of which concerned anyone when a teacher down the hall released them for lunch. Though he remained restless the entire walk home, Natsume recovered his pleasant mood as they darted off into the thin copse of trees near the road's edge.

The gentle slope littered in decaying branches and withered leaves compressed underfoot, absorbing the soles of their shoes in narrow ditches of mud. The trees here were gaunt, sparse twigs that emerged from the dank ground with a general reluctance, as if shrinking from the sun. Many had been felled by the elements, splinters protruding from the earth and stretching for the sky. A narrow creek wound through the lower ground, a rickety bridge made of spare rotten wood planks somewhere downstream. There wasn't much around, as Natsume often pointed out, but he wasn't bothered. They made do with what they had.

The boys cleared the unstable, moldy bridge in a single bound without touching it, and slid up the rise on the other side as the uneven ground yielded beneath their feet. If later called upon to recall what had transpired, neither of them would have a solid answer. It was a made-up game of grandeur, all credit owed to the strange and fantastic ideas Natsume brought with him from the city. And the countryside had its own unique charm as well, encompassed in the mythological stories of monsters and spirits.

The technological advances in industry and luxuries the city afforded a number of its citizens contributed to their creations. The entertainment and vitality there were sensations a mere country boy could never imagine alone. He supposed his grandparents' old tales of demons that stalked the shadows and gods that reigned over the forests were amusing, even scary to naïve young children, but in the end were intangible specters. The most solid proof he had ever seen were those little stone shrines scattered throughout the land. And as far as he knew, there wasn't a major shrine near them.

Though Natsume held no particular inclination towards the weathered, moss-covered stones, other foreign kids found them intriguing, at least. They were pieces of history in some sense. The deeper the mountain trails burrowed, the stranger the shrines, or so he had heard. Some no longer retained a human or animal form. Not that he had ever harbored a strong desire to seek these forgotten little monuments out. Who had the time and patience for that? He couldn't recall who had told him about them.

The rain had dampened their lungs a little by the time they meandered back home, but the slight coughs and warm skin weren't a major distraction. The sun had lowered beyond the overcast sky, a dimmed ball of weak golden light behind grey curtains. The flat clouds extended over a typical rural scene: houses dotting verdant fields and brown dirt paths, hills rising into different properties. Primarily a farming community, there wasn't much livestock wandering around except for some complementary chickens. There were other industries in town, of course, but a majority made a living from the fall harvest.

His house expressed the plain, practical style of tradition. Pale wood, rice paper doors, a deck suspended over the dampened ground, and a stone tiled roof that sometimes clattered and shattered in a storm. The structure was set into the shadow of the nearby forest, denser than the woods that dotted the road to school. The surrounding land was boggy and always contained that dank scent of earth, now obscured by the distinctive odor rain emitted. He glanced about, but the family dog was probably nestled away in the storehouse or underneath the main building and didn't leap out to greet him as usual.

The others in the family were at work, but his grandparents were probably lurking somewhere inside. He beckoned Natsume to approach with caution, sliding the wooden door in its frame as silently as possible. There was a point when he knew a knot in the wood would catch in the track, so he stopped it and squeezed through the narrow space. As predicted, most of the family's sandals were absent from the landing. As Natsume glided past him and muttered, "Sorry for the intrusion", he closed the door and shrugged off his coat.

This was routine, a type of game he and his cousins invented while they still attended the same elementary school. Their unpleasant elders plagued the children since they were small, urging them to help around the house instead of darting outside to play, and screaming them down to lend a hand. The light rain was enough to dampen their joints, so perhaps they were asleep now. Either way, it was fun to see how long they could escape chores and other such duties. Natsume just played along with a pleasant smile.

He had to admit that the city kid adjusted rather well. When the boy arrived to stay with his relatives, he'd been inconsolable and prone to random bouts of crying or grim silence. Most of the city kids were slow to adjust even after the initial stage of unsettlement. When they realized that they were here to stay, they became overwhelmed by the drastically different environment. Theirs was a quiet life, he understood, and a simple one. Economically, they still had a lax tendency to exchange favors or goods instead of money.

_Their work was hard but honest,_ as his older cousin once worded it. Now that cousin was gone, perhaps trampled into an unknown turf in the Pacific or sunk and lost in the depths of the sea, and all he had left were those words. He grimaced at the memories and the knowledge that the black and whites were still untouched and folded underneath his spare clothes in the closet.

"Kimura-san, are you okay?" Natsume whispered from around the corner. He blinked, kicked off his shoes, and bounded up the landing on muffled feet to join him with a disregarding wave. He wriggled his toes uncomfortably, but hesitated to yank his socks off; bare feet made noise, particularly if they were wet from the rain. Together they advanced down the dim, drafty hallways towards the back of the house where his bedroom was. It was empty, but he had once shared it with his brother before he had been drafted.

Often as children they inevitably argued over sharing a room, though they managed to accept the arrangement as a necessary fact of life. Now, these past few years, the empty space had been a source of great loneliness and discomfort. The regular sounds of human life and severe comfort of another human being were things he hadn't noticed he needed to sleep until his brother was gone. Sometimes Natsume visited and slept over or he would creep over there to invade the relatively quite household.

Though, a quiet household wasn't necessarily a good thing either, just like his quiet room.

When they managed to enter without mishap, he went to the far wall and slid the screen open just enough to expose the space to the outside. The musty air was suffocating, and the rain's soft patter soothing. From here had a nice view of the forest, as well as the stretch of foliage and mountains in the far off distance. Of course, the light mist that had settled over the land obscured that view temporarily.

"Hey," Natsume said as they were sitting in silence sometime after dinner. He flipped through a notebook filled with drawings and side notes unrelated to the day's lesson. He couldn't even remember what the teacher had tried to teach them. "You guys really get to go on a trip to the mountains? I mean, really deep into the mountains – where all the shrines are? How are we supposed to get there?"

He glanced at his friend and shrugged. Natsume was referring to the field trip that came around the beginning of fall sometime after the festival and before the harvesting season plunged them into work. The high school and junior high school students took a week long camping trip into the mountains each year before the war, and the school decided to implement the program again. For most of the town's residents, the mountains were as mysterious and unexplored as they were to the city people. No one had the luxury of time to explore the mountains in modern or ancient times. Only courageous samurai did that.

The students liked the trip, though. It wasn't exactly a relaxing excursion to the hot springs, but they enjoyed it.

"We'll probably walk. The paths up there are too narrow or underdeveloped in some places, so we can't ride a bike even if we had them. But we don't go to the mountains here; the school rents a bus to take us to a different one. We get on the train to Nagaoka and then take a bus somewhere else. Or at least, that's what my cousins said they do. I don't see why they'd change it this year, if they decided to run it again."

The answer satisfied his friend. Natsume might have thought that he was calm and collected because he was accustomed to such sights, but inside he was probably as excited as his friend. Sure, he saw the mountains and forests every day since he was a child, but he had never wandered deep into them and seen _real_ shrines. The cheap little stones ones didn't quite count. Perhaps it was more of a shock to people who had never really seen an extensive forest or lived right at its border.

"It'll be fine. I heard that it's pretty relaxed. Most of the time people are goofing off and it doesn't move that fast, so it's not like it's very demanding. As long as you have some endurance in your lungs, you should be fine." His friend nodded and tossed the notebook aside, stretching out subtlety toned arms in front of him. Despite his displacement, Natsume hadn't complained very much about the monotonous work everyone here was subjected to. Between the two of them, no one was particularly strong, but it was impossible not to grow.

Though he had to admit, the mixture of frailty and strength in his city friend had endeared the boy to him. Maybe it was only because Natsume was the first person from such a place that he had met, but he thought that he would rather have Natsume and his strange quirks than another country kid as his neighbor. He could never tell the same of the other boy, of course, but he liked to think that Natsume had grown somewhat fond of him as well.

He scrambled towards the open door and crawled on hands and knees to the shielded deck outside, leaning over the edge enough to find the crescent moon hanging in the sky. Squinting at the sliver of light, he crawled back inside and shut the wooden frames tight. The rain was still falling at the same steady rate, though it might increase in intensity later into the night. It was about time to sleep, he figured, so he cupped his hands over the candle flame to blow it out.

Natsume slipped into the futon that had once been his brother's and curled up on his side, his face winking out of existence when the flame died. The room had a draft courtesy of the rain, but the warmth from their laughter and blankets was enough to stave off the cold. At least it wasn't as bad as the winter months, when no one had any qualms sleeping pressed against each other with a few blankets piled on top.

The last thought he had that night was of the military issued car that rolled down the street. Perhaps it had become part of his dream, but he imagined his older brother and father just as they were the day they departed on the train, this time climbing into the back of that car. His father had a grim, sullen face and a stiff back. His brother had been pleasant and encouraging, one arm thrown over their cousin's shoulder as they posed as if to imprint a photograph in their memories. It was a good photo, he thought. It was in color and not at all blurry.

People were so happy when those things arrived. The people departing on them were happy, too, despite the fate that awaited them. Had he been happy? Or had he been crying like some others were that day? He couldn't quite remember having a sense of self on the platform. Surely his mother and aunts were there, along with the younger kids, but he couldn't quite form a photograph of them in his mind.

It was the same, he supposed, the same no matter the shape of the vehicle that transported men to their deaths. In the end, no one wanted to see such things again.

* * *

><p><em>It was a fair summer's day, as far as summer days went. The breeze rustled the dry leaves, the fluttering laundry, and stirred the dry earth beneath his feet. The sun glistened overhead, blissfully forgiving today. Rain had not arrived recently, but the clear skies and pleasant wind heralded worse weather to come. Not a cloud was in sight. The sweet crop scents drifted to the main house and the aromas from spices in the kitchen wafted into the courtyard.<em>

_He dusted calloused hands on his light cotton pants. His shirt lay draped over a tree branch back in the field and his chest shone from the sticky, gritty layers of sweat. Just a quick lunch, and then it was back to work for him. The younger children had already eaten, their discarded bowls and chopsticks scattered over the deck where they played their innocent games. A few abandoned toys littered the yard. Perhaps they were in the middle of playing a game. He couldn't see a single one._

_No – that was wrong – he spotted a little boy in the shade, sitting outside a room with the rice paper doors wide open. Since he had time to spare, he wandered over to see who it was there all alone. The little boy fiddled with a toy ball made with rice and spare bits of cloth, the type used to play the game where people kicked it with their ankles. It was little Seiji, his cousin, the son of his mother's brother._

"_Hey, what're you doing, kid?" he asked as he sat down on the side of the deck and leaned forward. The little boy blinked and raised his head questioningly, akin to a wide-eyed rabbit for a moment before he realized who it was. A wide grin broke out on his small, adorable face. He smiled back. Maybe there wasn't anything wrong with him, after all._

"_I'm waiting for the others to hide. Did you just come back from work?" Seiji erupted in a rush. He chuckled at the child's antics and nodded, restraining himself from ruffling the kid's hair. He'd only dirty the soft locks and besides, the kid hated it. Seiji nodded in return a few times, returning to his ball in solemnity. He didn't need to prod him into speaking the truth; patience was all one needed with Seiji. He eventually voiced his concerns. "Why are you always working? The kids from Fujioka say that it's dirty work. You should find a job in a shop."_

_He blinked. He didn't remember having such troubles as a kid. Everyone he knew growing up was in the same or similar positions economically, though some were a little better off than others. They never once considered themselves in squalor and poverty, though they knew that they weren't rich and had little money to afford nice things. Then again, the short time ago when he had been a child, Fujioka kids hadn't yet come from the neighboring town to attend school._

"_I don't mind this work, as long as it helps my family. Don't listen to them, okay? It doesn't matter what they think. If I'm unhappy, I'll get a different job to support you guys. But don't get me wrong. Our work is hard, but honest. Honest work is all a man can ever ask for in our situation. Whatever you end up being happy with is okay, too, but I'm content here," he beamed at the boy. Seiji had listened with rapt attention, no doubt deeply bothered by his thoughts until now._

"_Okay," he said as he darted off to find his cousins._

* * *

><p>• While devising this story, I deliberated over what would constitute as "original" without featuring the canon characters. After all, Battle Royale provides a perfect cookie-cutter story: X number of kids are forced to fight until one remains. I chanced upon this idea Takami brought to the table: What if Japan had won WWII and this was the result? I decided to delve into one of the very first Programs, being a bit of a history buff. Also, having a love of historical stuff, there are some references within the story and heavy cultural themes.<p>

• _The Book of Water _was a war strategy book that was part of a collection called _The Book of Five __Rings_, _written by Musashi Miyamoto. The Book of Water _ emphasized flexibility in life and in fighting, the ability to adjust to any situation as water molds to the form of its container.

• I used Google Map to find the location of the mountains in Niigata, so places like Nagaoka and the Shinano River exist, though Akiyama and Fujioka are fictional. I suppose that back then the mountains would have been less developed.

• Each chapter will end with a little anecdote. It won't always be centered around the main characters. Speaking of which, all names are in Eastern order and are referred to by their surnames unless the main character is particularly close to them.


	2. En Route to Death

_**The Book of Water**_

_**Chapter Two**_

_En Route to Nagaoka_

_And_

_An Unspecified Mountain Range in Niigata Prefecture_

A sturdy canvas traveling bag thrown over one shoulder, he swung around on the crowded platform searching for a friend who should have arrived already. Natsume lingered at his side, pleasantly chatting with a female classmate as he sought out his old friend's distinctive tousle of hair. It was hardly appropriate to cram thirty students on a single dilapidated train platform half immersed in the muddy ground, but the teachers were strict about maintaining a sense of order. Their uptight behavior had some logical basis, he supposed. All they needed was massive disorder when they arrived in the city.

It was a shame that the train was the sole method of mass transportation away from this town, he'd thought for some time now. The iron and steel bullet of compartments had never evoked such a strong dislike from him as a child – he recalled having a certain fascination relating to trains – but the war had given the railroad a different definition. While he was sure others had similar sentiments, no one expressed these thoughts. It was insignificant compared to their excitement, and the country was no longer at war.

Kawasaki Hisoka was a tall boy for their age group, though the general impression he emitted had no correlation with his height. He didn't have a distinctive memory associated with their first meeting, as was the case among his closer childhood friends. The friendship between them had become a natural aspect of their daily lives, almost taken for granted. A world where Kawasaki Hisoka and Kimura Seiji were strangers didn't exist. The same applied to their other friends, and to some extent even their enemies or acquaintances. People had difficulty claiming to have no relations with others.

Hisoka – he couldn't ever recall a period of time when he had called him "Kawasaki" – pushed his way through the crowd and greeted the two with a grin. Behind him came his neighbor, who lived near the supply store his parents owned, an average girl named Azuma Sayori. She wasn't silent by any means, but their boisterous classmates eclipsed her enough that he still didn't know much pertaining to her. They nodded in each other's direction in a hasty greeting before she departed.

"Are you excited to see the city – again?" Hisoka inquired of the boys as they shoved a path through to the edge of the crowd. Natsume shrugged; his expression and body language were impartial and unreadable. He could have been consumed by a clawing anxiety or jubilant excitement without a single clue as to which he truly felt. Seiji couldn't restrain the corners of his lips from twitching upwards as he made a wide, sweeping gesture over the crowd and grimaced. With these classmates, he wasn't too happy, but not a single local kid had ever been out of town before.

Perhaps for Natsume it would be an overwhelming experience of nostalgia. He reminded himself to keep a watchful eye on his friend.

"Come on, my cousins tortured me ever since I was a kid about how great the city is," Seiji grinned. They had complaints, too, but it wasn't as if they lived there or had any intention of moving. Still, no one could deny that it was an experience worth trying in their lifetime. The fall harvesting season wouldn't commence until after they returned, so they had plenty of time to relax and release the leftover tension from the postwar months.

The students down the platform shifted as a collective mass when the train's distinctive sounds reached their ears, appearing as a black speck in the distance. The hulking metal contraption soon screeched to a grinding half in perfect alignment with the platform's boundaries, coughing and spewing black fumes. Two teachers assigned to maintain some semblance of order on the trip squeezed their way to the front, drawing the students' attention just long enough to deliver basic instructions on conduct.

Not that he really heard them from his position along the edge of the crowd.

Hisoka seized his arm in a tight, uncomfortable grip and attempted to snatch Natsume with his other arm as the students began filing into the large passenger compartments. Seiji grumbled and attempted to regain control over his limbs, a futile effort. He cast a desperate, pleading glance at his free friend, but the other boy returned it with a smile as he melted into the crowd. Seiji slumped in defeat, now alone with his frustrating friend with the insane tendency to cling and shake him for fun.

Well, he considered that Hisoka might not have been aware that his behavior was unacceptable by normal standards. It was hard to believe, as it became intolerably annoying after years of bruised arms and dazed vision. Any protests, however, were promptly silenced or outright ignored. Maybe he _was_ aware that Seiji suffered under his grasp, relishing in his physical pain and absolute boredom for some sick, twisted reason. And it was _not_ a joy speaking to Hisoka for any extended period of time.

There was just something about the quality of his voice that was not suited towards conversation. Recalling these details in solid words now that they unraveled before him, Seiji wondered why he had been searching for this insane boy instead of running far away. In fact, now that he pondered it, he had never run away from Hisoka's clutches despite his horror at being caught.

"Do you want to see the shrines? I'm sure some of our friends want to see them at least once in their lives, since we live so close to them, after all. It'd be a shame if we didn't at least pass a few, even though you don't particularly like them. Natsume-kun would want to see them, right? He seems interested in those things when we talk about it. And Sayori-san said that she'd see them if you 'left me in a ditch', which I don't _think_ you'd do….well, maybe, if it was really boring."

Metal benches stretched down the length of the narrow train car, broken at even intervals by rods emerging from the ceiling and floor as support. Half of their homeroom fit into this compartment, the other half in the portion before this one. Seiji craned his neck around to find Natsume with a group some meters away. Unfortunately, Hisoka refused to release him from his strange, melodic chatter.

Seiji didn't place extraneous thought into begrudging him based off his clingy nature or incessant talking, as these traits also happened to be his endearing qualities. But, he still downright hated that tone of voice he managed to possess. True, when he was under loads of stress and dangerously frustrated at people or events or things, he had every ounce of appreciation for his friend's voice. The pleasant ring soothed his rampaging emotions, but also lulled him to sleep as an unfortunate side effect. And although he claimed that he wasn't offended when Seiji drifted away against shoulder or other body parts, he was still guilty that he hadn't listened the whole way through.

Over the years, his tolerance to this sound increased, so by focusing on specific points he was able to retain consciousness much more effectively than in the past. His eyes flickered over their entwined arms, tanned skin contrasting against that of a girl next to them, from the city, who was as pale as the deep snow the region received. He roamed over the noisy compartment, their disgruntled Japanese literature teacher Suzuki in the far corner. The landscape rushing past the windows was a mirror image of their town: lush green fields and brown paths lined with houses, golden and red leaves dotting the trees.

The bloodshot brilliance displayed by the autumn leaves imprinted in his mind's eye. His physical eyes fluttered closed from the monotonous stimuli, colors blurring into a single palate. He rested against Hisoka's upper arm, feeling his friend's warmth and gentle vibrations as he spoke, this time to another unfortunate victim. It was reassuring to know that if he happened to slip due to the train's violent jolts, Hisoka would allow him to rest in his lap just the same as when they were children.

It was the little things like these that never changed, no matter how distant friends grew or how drastically different their personalities became. Seiji did cherish these types of "things" for all the words and looks of complaints he shot his various friends. He considered that perhaps none but Hisoka, and perhaps Natsume, understood what some thought to be his coldness. Though to be fair, he had no idea how other people functioned either.

When the train arrived in the city Hisoka shook him awake with enough force to unsettle a horse and excitedly whipped around to stare out the window. Dazed and still half-asleep, Seiji crawled up and grasped the ledge next to him, rubbing the murkiness from his eyes as he squinted. Leering grey buildings surrounded them, the sleek black road notably smoother than the lumpy, pebble-ridden dirt roads back home. The sun glimmered between the gaps in the tall structures; the entire sight was purely industrial.

A city of metal and grey, void of a single speck of green, was an awesome, alien experience for a majority of them.

An overwhelming amount of people traversed the streets in tandem. There were too many signs to process, too much stimuli, and a defined cultural difference between these people who lived kilometers away and their small town's inhabitants. It struck him mute. For the moment he wasn't irritated by Hisoka's death grip on his arm as they gaped at the buildings flickering past the windows, as he'd normally be. Something like this was a sight he would never have thought he could see in ten lifetimes, let alone at fifteen years.

It was as the teachers preached, for once. The world was changing around them, despite the stationary and stagnant lives they led in their town, lives that had continued in an uninterrupted cycle for centuries. Even war's harsh cruelties didn't stop the vital importance of cultivation, and even under pressure from rations and shortages, they had done their work as normal. For such a town, life could not thrive without these traditions and the endurance necessary to harvest year after year.

So, despite their idealistic and youthful hopes before the war had entrenched misery on the country's inhabitants, not a single one of his classmates had any future ahead of them. Their ambitions reached the clouds, but their feet were firmly planted on the earth where their fathers and grandfathers had toiled for centuries. The impact the city's skyline had on Akiyama's youths was a sentiment kids born from these concrete and metal buildings could never comprehend. Most of those kids stared with partial interest out the windows or humored their new friends with a smile.

"How're we going to go back to the mountains after this?" Azuma Sayori said in wonder, her voice rising to a high pitch as she excitedly turned to her friend.

It was true. But they had to face the reality that this society no longer had a need for them. The adults already declared the worthlessness of their generation, condemning them to failure before they had a chance to reach the same status of maturity as their criticizers. Moreover, the country kids who were amazed and struck mute by a mere city skyline had no place of importance in the world. The children capable of becoming doctors, politicians, or businessmen ranked higher than their dilapidated class from Akiyama.

Seiji flopped down on his seat again, his mood slightly depressed by his thoughts, though his shift in emotion went completely unnoticed. Even Natsume, who was normally perceptive to his feelings, became immersed in the distractions around him and never so much as twitched in his direction. It was a fortunate thing, he supposed, for Natsume to make other friends. He couldn't be selfish and claim the boy for himself. Besides, it wasn't like Hisoka and Natsume were his only friends in their entire town, though he admitted that his closer companions were in a different homeroom than him.

"Ah, if this is a dream, I never want to wake up," Seiji sighed. His voice was a dull monotone compared to the noise in the compartment, but had anyone listened and paid deep enough attention, they might have caught the wistful fluctuation in his throat. He had no desire to return to his hometown now, not when he knew the fate that awaited him. It had been bearable before he was able to witness otherwise. Every day he would toil under the harsh sunlight, destroy the muscles in his back before he grew old, and perhaps marry a nice girl to carry on the family name.

The initial excitement eventually declined to a normal lull and Hisoka reclaimed his previous position. This was such a normal occurrence that not a single soul passed a second glance over the scene anymore. At first, he supposed it was considered strange behavior. Natsume had been perplexed when he introduced the newcomer to his taller friend, and it wasn't until Seiji explained their complicated fifteen years' worth of history together that he claimed to understand. Even now, he had a feeling that Natsume still didn't quite comprehend the situation.

To be fair, Seiji had a limited understanding of it as well. He had learnt to accept it more than question it; by this time, Hisoka's clingy nature had become a normal facet of life. Perhaps even Hisoka didn't have an answer to Natsume's curious inquiries. Why did the sun rise in the east and depart in the west? Why was the sky blue and why was the grass green? None of those questions were really questions – at least – not questions worth pondering and worrying over.

The train paused at a station where they transferred to the city bus that would take them far into the mountains. They didn't stop for lunch, though the sun had risen far above their heads by this time. For a majority of them, lunch was a luxury of the past that they had only regained in the past year or so. Rationing and foot shortages, even among a farming community, had struck the isolated country hard. Their lean stomachs were of necessity and forced circumstance, not of physical strength or clean appearances.

And the procession continued, delving into the streets and twisting through the midday traffic until the bus was finally pulling away from the city and rumbling towards the blurry, distorted mounds in the distance. These were impossible to see until they traveled some kilometers away from the city, but there wasn't much to imagine. From a distance and to some degree even within the forests, all the mountains in a single chain were alike. Without much effort, Seiji could formulate a fairly accurate image of the mountains before they appeared.

It was much more amusing, therefore, to observe his friend's reactions to the countryside surrounding them, however disheveled it appeared. He managed to squirm away from Hisoka's grip and ditch him with some other classmates to seek out Natsume, who had been sitting in a far corner. Two girls and a guy were with him; two of them Seiji had known since before grade school. The other was a girl native to Tokyo, Ueda if he recalled correctly, whose homeroom seat was in the very last desk near the door.

Not that he spent a particularly long time speaking with them in the past, but these were the types of people he preferred spending time with over the other occupants of the bus. They were each nice, hardworking people, respectful if nothing else. His family wasn't close with theirs, as they lived across town from each other, but he never heard negative comments about them. Ueda Isano was an enigma, quiet during class and always in the company of these two people, as they all lived in the same area.

Seiji recalled an incident from when they were children, before the war had broken out between them and the United States of America, involving Fujita Kiyoshi and Honda Ayako. Those two, despite living on opposite ends of town from him, had been in his homeroom since grade school began. They were best friends or something like that, but rarely spoke during class and never chose the other as a partner or playmate. He wouldn't know, but classmates who were closer to them knew that the two were inseparable outside of school.

They might have been in the third grade, which held for him vague, cloudy memories. Despair and suffering had yet to emerge as demons in their world, and so they were able to play and laugh in innocence and ignorance. That was the truth that everyone unknowingly embraced, too ignorant to even realize their fortune. But of course they were like that; they were kids then. Still, there were always the exceptions to those rules, which dominated their young lives as the state dominated the people.

Honda's mother had passed away in the second grade, so the wounds from her death were fresh and painful to the family at the time. Seiji could only recall this detail because he had a clear memory of writing consolation cards with Hisoka, who was a nightmare with arts and crafts. The boy had managed to chop off a lock of Seiji's hair, which had inevitably displeased his mother. Maybe that was the reason why Hisoka was still welcomed with reluctant smiles into his home.

That was a memory he couldn't forget, though it was a pity that he only remembered the death of another person due to the childish actions that took place between him and his friend.

At the time he had no idea what the economic situation was outside the confines of their hometown, but knew that businesses at the time were in a tough position. American manufacturing and trade left old family businesses mere specks of dust in the distance – not even worth mentioning in the sea of commerce. They never made excess money and they still paid taxes to the state. All this he had learnt afterwards, around the dinner table one nameless night. At the time he hadn't understood what it really meant.

Fujita (Fujita Goro as the class nicknamed him) hadn't shown up for school one day. This wasn't unusual, even when they were kids, but Honda was in a gloomy way the entire lesson until someone asked where Fujita had gone. It didn't cross their minds – and it wouldn't until the war swung into place – to consider that he might not ever return to school. Honda haltingly answered that he was in trouble with the police for stealing from the Morioka farm, and that he had foolishly done it for both their families.

Their instant tension dissipated as she finished talking. Of course, they all thought, Fujita Kiyoshi wasn't a trouble-making, disobedient boy. He was in fact rather quiet, though a little sarcastic, but never caused anyone grief. Of course he had stolen for a good cause, and so he probably wouldn't be punished too severely. Honda had been worrying all this time for nothing, they all comforted her. And indeed, Fujita returned to school a week later after he finished his chores, all the punishment his parents had given him to compensate for his crimes.

There were numerous other events in his childhood involving a majority of the people on this bus, so many he had trouble remembering them all. The most recent, fresh memories happened to be the most painful, but deep in the storehouse that contained the entire collection were pleasant ones, too. Seiji hadn't the largest capacity for memorization as someone like the best student Daichi Tokujiro, but in his mind there were certainly events that stood as clear and defined as the day they occurred.

A few of the girls down the aisle began to sing an old folksong, invoking another slew of locked-away memories he had forgotten he had. They sang it almost every year during the spring when everyone relaxed to watch the cherry blossoms fall in a secular dance of pale, dying pink. This was how it went now, after the government altered the lyrics:

"_Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,_

_The hills and fields and countryside as far as you can see._

_Is it a mist? Is it a cloud? Fragrant in the morning sunlight,_

_Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms, flowers in full bloom," _they sang.

There were no cherry blossoms now; only the bleeding waves and forests alight with fire mingled in the evergreens spread across the mountains. The fields were lush and verdant, but soon the fall harvest would reduce the rows to brown and black, healing soil once more. The vegetation along the road steadily grew denser, the trampled dirt path receding into the forest where there existed just enough room for the bus to pass through, though they had to close the windows to avoid the whip-like branches.

The bus didn't stop in one designated spot; it continued until the gangly roots protruding from the earth hindered it too much to safely advance. It was here that they disembarked, slowly tossing bags over shoulders and throwing raucous voices into the near-silent canopy weaving overhead. Though he found Hisoka's tall form easily, Seiji had no desire to approach him and preferred the company of those who he had sat with towards the end of the ride. Natsume peered around in childish, wide-eyed wonder.

"We're staying here for a _week_?" he muttered breathlessly to himself. Seiji nodded as if he were an expert, when in reality his heart pulsated with equivalent strength in his chest. An entire week without working or studying – since no one was about to write compositions out in the wilderness – and in the company of rather good friends? There was no way for him to remain nonchalant, and it showed in his lively step. Everyone was in an elevated mood.

It was, truthfully, something they all needed after the war. Adults, the bigwigs in particular, might have spoken highly esteemed nonsense about noble sacrifices and endurance for the sake of the nation, but the war had torn them apart. They were fatigued and exhausted emotionally, physically, and economically. The entire country suffered under this state, he suspected, the bombed cities suffering heavier casualties. There was a reason why their classmates hadn't returned home. There were no homes to return to and no family to return with.

Seiji had to admit that even the students usually defined as the gloomy, serious types were a little lax in their stances, though any emotions they might have had were still concealed under a carefully erected mask. He referred to only about three or four students, and a majority of the reserved city kids who hadn't quite settled in completely. There was Sakuma Kosuke and Morioka Mikie (Fujita had stolen from her family as a kid), both from Akiyama. And then there was Tsumoto Hitoshi and Shinseki Kimiyo from various cities in the nation.

Seiji didn't know any of them well, but he did know people who were friendlier with those students. From what he understood, it was probably just an innate part of their personalities to be withdrawn from the crowd and quietly observe while the others enthusiastically launched forth their greatest efforts. Seiji wasn't classified within either group definitively, so he perhaps understood a little of what went through their heads. But those students were also smiling now, walking among the others instead of hanging in the distance.

He shifted his canvas bag onto his opposite shoulder as they came across a felled tree, its rotten, broken limbs disintegrating and layered with moss. The teachers were somewhere up ahead, and the bus long gone back down the mountain. This path grew a lot worse for vehicles the further up the path wound, as for some reason every road up the mountain had to zigzag around precarious corners filled with dense trees. Seiji didn't know why, but that was what he had been told.

He glanced up, but couldn't see more than a few thin fragments of the sky through the fiery leaves and cool, billowy shadows. Little forest animals scuffled in the undergrowth, invisible to the human eye. The air smelled of sweetly dampened earth, completely unlike the moisture absorbed by the dirt in the aftermath of a storm or light shower. It hadn't rained in a week, so the ground had hardened and crumbled to dust in the fields, but underneath the trees it retained the water that gave the tender grass underfoot a springy feeling.

The dense canopy finally broke apart into thin, sparsely grown, young trees. The spindly forest gradually opened into a manmade clearing, almost a perfect ellipse in shape. Though located on the far side of an expanse of land, the tall, broad gate painted a distinctive red absorbed Seiji's immediate attention. From the arch, a pebbled path travelled from the crude road beyond the gentle slope they stood upon to the little wooden structure that was the local shrine. At barely a meter in height, the little object, reminiscent of a house, stood on a rectangular stone platform with tiny, useless steps leading up to the fake door.

A mouse might find it helpful – a mouse or a little spirit. Next to this, a vertical sign protruded from the earth, molded from a slab of chipping stone. The weather had worn away the characters so that the only word he could distinguish was the one that stood for "white". Perhaps no one had bothered worshiping here for some time or maybe the residents had thought it suitable to leave the weathered testament to the gods instead of replacing it. It appeared a little too depleted for being a shrine so close to civilization, though. Even the red Torii gate had spidery cracks lacing its surface.

Their teachers were standing near the gates when Natsume flinched, as if he'd been struck across the head. Seiji turned to his friend quizzically, mouthing, "What's wrong?"

"…N-nothing; I thought I heard something," Natsume mumbled as he straightened himself and glanced around the surrounding copse of trees. An approximately ten meter radius of sparse trees extended beyond the clearing, so it wasn't as if anyone could sneak up on them without being seen. Seiji frowned. Natsume sometimes had these reactions when he heard the mountain creatures' clamor in the night, from the safety of their rooms. He always maintained a constant state of awareness whenever they ventured into the forests surrounding their town. Perhaps he had heard something like that.

But what emerged a moment afterwards was nothing compared to the fiercest creatures the mountains had created eons ago in either myth or reality. He had no idea how they had entered unseen and unnoticed, but they were definitely human.

They were human and they were wearing the battle fatigues that everyone had thought they would never have to see again. After all, the country had won the war and achieved a state of "peace" through all of the sacrifices the men of their households gave.

* * *

><p><em>Fujita Kiyoshi considered himself a good son, unlike his disobedient older brother who had run away from home to join the army in the Great War. He had returned with pitiful pleas and a crippled body, and their parents had no choice except to provide for him and put him to work in the family shop. After a half a year, he began complaining about the boring job, while Kiyoshi had never once voiced his opinion. After all, there were much worse jobs in this world to have. And, he never worked more than an hour or two.<em>

_Kiyoshi did not believe himself a very good friend, not all of the time at least. Though he did try to reciprocate the friendships he had, it was often more difficult to be friendly than obedient. Even Ayako (he never did call her Honda anymore) thought he was a bit cold sometimes, though she didn't seem to mind as much. Of course she might never say it to him directly, but he was insensitive to other people in conversation a lot. It only occurred to him afterwards that he might have been rude._

_As a child, Kiyoshi was not completely aware of his family's money issues, except that his older brother and his laziness had a lot to do with it. And more often than not, he would go to school without food and come home to a small dinner and screaming parents and a furious, defensive brother. He tried working more, but his parents made him attend school and business was slow, anyways. His father was always taking the train to the city to sell things, not that the market there was much better._

_As for his nickname, Fujita Goro, he had to say that he hardly deserved it at all. He didn't have chivalrous bravery or smooth skills with anything that could serve as a weapon. He didn't fight much, except when he was really angry, and he had no idea what Bushido even entailed, except for honor and suicide. Fujita Goro, the alias of Saito Hajime, the samurai from the infamous Shinsengumi. That was how the story went, anyways. Fantastic tales about brave, strong samurai were a favorite topic of the boys in town. They always asked for these stories._

_He was not fierce to a fraction of that extent, though he supposed that his words sometimes stung or ignored how other people might feel. He didn't have strength or an abundance of intelligence, only a sharp tongue and a silent, brewing attitude at times, so he really had no other way to help than this. Maybe he did feel bad for stealing, but the Morioka family was wealthy and fairly nice. If his parents asked, they would probably lend them money or food, but his parents had that pride of theirs to content with._

_And besides, he was doing it for Ayako's family as well. They were in a similar position to his own and she was his best friend who didn't care about his sarcasm or cold attitude. It wouldn't be much, and he wouldn't continue to take advantage of it, so he reasoned that it must be alright. People stole worse things and for worse reasons._

_Except that he got caught. The flood of light swept across the field in a narrowing area, but the elder Morioka saw him. He tried to run, but the path back to the road was steep and his legs short and he eventually wound up sitting on the tatami mats with a lowered, defeated head. He was a chastised dog with his tail between his legs. Morioka scolded him as a relative went to inform his own family, but at the end of the lecture Kiyoshi felt a firm hand land on his shoulder. Without realizing it, he had closed his eyes tight._

"_There are much better ways around it, if you truly want to help someone. You should only break the law and hurt someone else if there are no other options and no one you can turn to for support. If you had asked, we would have gladly lent your family money because you are honest people, and would definitely repay us in time. I suppose it's suitable if you come and work for me for a little while as punishment. It wouldn't be right of me to ask anything else."_

_Kiyoshi nodded, hidden tears kept at bay only because people would expect "Fujita Goro" to do the same. There really were good people in this world, as he would later come to understand. At that moment, perhaps he had known this in fewer words, in a more sincere manner than he could ever experience otherwise._

* * *

><p>• The song <em>Cherry <em>_Blossoms_ sung by the girls is a traditional Japanese song. In 1941 the song was altered by the Ministry of Education; that version is featured here. This mountain that they are going to exists in Japan. I'm uncertain of what its name is, as I can't read the kanji on the map. The shrine is also real, though I'm not sure what it looks like, as I can't read that name either (except for the character for "white"). "The Great War" is WWI before it was called such.

• The Shinsengumi were a famous group of samurai that acted as a police force in Tokyo during the mid 1800s. Saito Hajime is one of those famous samurai, but after the Boshin War and the Shinsengumi disbanded, became known as Fujita Goro. He died in 1915.

• Why was Natsume able to hear it first? In psychology, this is called Weber's Law. This phenomenon occurs most prominently when a person is placed into an unfamiliar environment and notices a stimuli because it is unfamiliar to them. A local resident would take a much longer time to realize the presence of the stimuli.

• The student list comes after this, right before the game starts. I wanted to let you get to know a few of the characters before browsing the list. Thanks goes to Double Feature for reviewing - it means a lot to me!


	3. Akiyama Class 4B Student Roster

**Akiyama Junior High School, Class 4B Roster**

Total: 30 students

**Boys**

1. Asakura Yukio

2. Daichi Tokujiro

3. Endo Isamu

4. Okuda Tomohisa

5. Kawasaki Hisoka

6. Kimura Seiji

7. Sakuma Kosuke

8. Shimada Daisuke

9. Takamura Minoru

10. Tsumoto Hitoshi

11. Toguchi Satoshi

12. Nakano Yuuto

13. Natsume Ryo

14. Wakamoto Jiro

15. Fujita Kiyoshi

**Girls**

1. Azuma Sayori

2. Igarashi Hiroko

3. Ishimura Masami

4. Ueda Isano

5. Edagawa Yoshiko

6. Omura Rikuyo

7. Kamiya Chiyoko

8. Kobayashi Kayu

9. Shinseki Kimiyo

10. Tezuka Satomi

11. Nozawa Sachiko

12. Honda Ayako

13. Hoshino Shizue

14. Miyahara Toshiko

15. Morioka Mikie

*Edit: The characters' surnames are ordered according to the Japanese phonetic alphabet.


	4. The Land Upon Which the Sun Sets

_**The Book of Water**_

_**Chapter Three**_

_The Shrine on the Ota River,_

_Near Nagaoka City_

Seiji imagined himself as participating in a collective dream shared by the inhabitants of this clearing. The scene was a cruel parody of a dream – or nightmare – that had plagued him since childhood. The setting was always in a forest away from town, in an area upon which the night sky shone a hazy blue light, the normal sounds of life in a mysterious suspension. From the thick shadows launched against the borders were townspeople holding wire traps, knives, and other assorted weapons. Their arsenal changed every night, according to their prey.

The creatures that had become their unfortunate victims also morphed each time he returned to the clearing. The one constant factor was that Seiji was always trapped within that animal's quivering body, able to experience its innermost, primal instincts as if they were his own. This animal was usually small: a rabbit, a mouse, a cat, not always a typical animal a person might hunt. Sometimes it was large, a creature that would reign as a predator in the natural world or a sturdy, swift-footed buck.

The instinctual feelings that accompanied these various forms also varied from pure terror to fierce defiance. The little ones were still as statues, hardly daring to quiver or blink until blazing pain struck them down. The bucks leapt away in a few long, powerful strides and collided with walls of flesh and bone, lashing out with hooves and spearhead antlers, determined in every way to take its killers to the afterlife. And the fiercest of all were those predators with claws and fangs and sinewy, coiled muscles beneath rippling skin.

The outcomes differed depending on the night, but he had never escaped that clearing alive. When the sensations woke him, his heart continued to pulsate in rhythm with the creatures he had embodied, and for a few terrifying moments he was unable to differentiate reality from the dream. The dank scent of earth beneath his flaring nostrils, the sweet metallic blood seeping from his hide, the human sounds looming victorious above him – they all remained with him well into the waking hours.

And now he had the sense that he was within that reoccurring dream again, except this time he could not recall having fallen asleep. This time the weapons were not kitchen knives or hunting rifles, but military firearms and unknown faces. Perhaps Seiji understood this painful threat pressing them from all sides better than his childhood classmates. He had never found any reason or trigger behind these dreams and shared the details with a few select people, realistically able to accept it as his imagination.

He froze up, this time a rabbit, unable to do more than breathe as sharp terror plunged through his heart. The imminent fear of death was so palpable that he had no mind for questions. Animals could not ask "Why?" or "What's happening?" as many of his classmates did. No, an animal had no choice but to bypass all those questions and focus on the matter at hand. They had a limited collection of thoughts and primitive questions that might flicker through their minds.

You are surrounded by humans with weapons that will burn and shred your flesh. What do you do? Do you flee or fight? Those were the only questions that should be in their minds. Never mind the reason why – there was no use contemplating an unchangeable fact in such a dire situation. Asking "why" wasn't likely to prevent the inevitable from occurring.

Classmates of his screamed and roared, almost frighteningly changed into a massive wave of frightened teenagers within seconds of the revelation that _this was not normal_. They still sported throbbing wounds from the wartime horrors they had witnessed, a mixture of supposed devotion to the country and an instinctual fear of guns. He focused his rapt attention on those thin barrels and the fingers held against the triggers as his classmates jostled him about. They might fire at any second if he dared remove his sight. There was a limit to standstill, ceasefire situations.

A pressure clawed at his elbow. His first reaction was to assume that it was Hisoka, but Seiji realized that it was Natsume's frightened whimpers beside him. Belatedly, he also realized that his opposite hand returned the death grip, his knuckles shaking and white where skin stretched taut over his bones. Perhaps his eyes were also pulsating wider in fear as they trained on the cold, impersonal barrels arranged in a perfect sequence around them. He couldn't swallow the lump that had gathered in his throat.

A soldier in his peripheral vision broke his gun from the formation, aiming in a clean arc over the scattered kids as he barked, "Shut up and stand still! You should all be smart kids; you don't want to be shot, do you?"

The instantaneous silence shuddered through the crowd. Though they had witnessed burning flesh and incinerating buildings from the Allied bombings, never once had they gone face-to-face with the guns that characterized this day and age. Takamura Minoru's father was the closest any of them had been to a real bullet. The man had returned from the field crippled, unlike most whose spirits had traveled back in envelopes. He now sported a rough, circular scar on his right knee, forever ruining any chances he might have had of walking normally.

Takamura's father offered war stories to any kid who had the attention span to listen, much to the chagrin of the neighborhood. They had never felt a pain akin to the burning fire that supposedly accompanied the shredding of human flesh, but nonetheless the soldier's threat subdued each of them to the state of a little lamb.

Then, as if suddenly recalling that they had not arrived at this spot alone, one-by-one the students' heads turned to their teachers. Saito and Suzuki, their homeroom and Japanese literature teachers respectively, stood beneath the peeling red arch with crossed arms. Their severe, lined faces stared into the crowd of children, many of whom they had known for fifteen years. Voices around him cried out in quivering tones almost too afraid to spit accusations, for accusing them would mean admitting the truth. That blatant truth would hurt the most, no doubt.

"As you all know," Suzuki began in his normal voice. It was a patient voice, but it was now absent of its usual smile. "You should all remember from our lessons that when the people as a whole collectively agree to be governed by common laws, they forfeit certain rights for the common good. To be saved from disorder and violence, the people consent to be governed. This is the concept Westerners call the 'social contract'. As you have all experienced in your lifetimes, the government holds much more influence over the people in times of war or strife. And in war or strife, we as a people bond together over a common enemy.

"It may be unpatriotic to say this, but it is regrettable that we must remain loyal to the government." Saito fixed Suzuki with a glare, but it was not with the same critical eyes as those belonging to the soldiers. The entire group in the clearing tensed as a result. So at least this man was remorseful, they realized. No matter what happened from here on out, the most optimistic were comforted by this simple fact. Their teacher managed a brief smile before it winked out of existence forever.

"In simpler words, it has been an honor to see you all grow up from children to who you are today. No matter what happens, you should all know that we're all very proud of you. And to those of you who I have only had the pleasure of knowing for a few short years, I am proud of you as well. Moving here must have been hard." Everyone around him lowered their heads, thirty different emotions shining out of thirty different faces. It sounded like a graduation ceremony, the one they were supposed to have this spring. For a moment, they were able to forget the soldiers and their guns.

"I'm sure you remember that uproar over the new legislation passed a few months ago. You don't?" Saito looked over the students' confused expressions. Seiji blinked; indeed, he barely recalled the Diet member's face, let alone his speech. "All of us were saying how our little rundown town would hardly be picked for something like a lottery. The odds were in our favor, remember? But we weren't that lucky after all, and now we're here. Now we're here to fight another war, this time amongst ourselves."

The bodies around him shuffled – a nervous mass rolling in anxiety, uncomprehending and at the same time frightfully aware of where they stood on the map. The mention of war churned the acid in their stomachs. And what was worse was that some of them had begun to recall the truth in their teacher's words.

"No, it can't be real! What kind of government would make something like that? Teacher, it's not really about killing each other, right? Isn't it just a survival program? Isn't it?" Daichi Tokujiro beseeched of him, desperately flinging his arms in a wide gesture as if to sweep across the entire forest. Positioned slightly behind Seiji, he was able to see the gloss in his classmate's eyes that revealed different emotions. No, Daichi didn't quite believe that the program was a bluff, and he didn't expect Saito's answer to be positive. Daichi had only spoken because no one else dared move a muscle, because something was better than nothing.

"No, I'm afraid this isn't a game. Or at least, for us, it's not a game," Saito shook his head. He glanced at the soldiers, who, although stiff as statues, seemed to entice him to continue. "Just like in war, there are a few rules. One of those rules is to kill the enemy in any way possible and you will live. The last person surviving by the end of three days will-"

"No, this is _wrong! Teacher, you're wrong!_" someone shrieked. It may have been a boy or a girl, but Seiji didn't a chance to wonder as the person in question stormed to the front. He identified the navy and white colored sailor suit and the short, slouched figure that was Morioka Mikie. That curvature of the shoulders was a family trait, but Morioka Mikie wore it nicely in the sense that she managed a sophisticated image quite well. For this instance, she drew her shoulders back and lifted her chin. "The war is _over_. We – _Japan won._"

Saito cast an undecipherable glance over the soldiers, but none of them reacted. Their stone guns still pointed at the students, but didn't see Morioka as a threat. Saito sighed and ran a hand through his receding hairline. "The rules are simple. Kill each other and the survivor can return home. To answer your question, Japan might have won the war, but these are the new rules. As citizens who agreed to allow the government to govern us, we must follow them to the very end. Kill each other. Die and know that you die to serve this country. Be proud that you are of the first to sacrifice yourselves for the Republic."

Morioka murmured something, but Seiji didn't hear her. Someone obviously had, because the students around her grew agitated. Well, those students grew _more_ agitated than before. Now that the initial shock had worn away, they were able to react with anger instead of despair.

"There are no rules about how you kill. You may use anything in this enclosed area as a weapon, in addition to the random weapons in these military issued bags," Saito continued as a soldier appeared from the road below, boots scuffing the stone pathway. A large duffel bag the size of a human torso was in his hands. It was the same color as the battle fatigues. "What you get is decided by fate. There's also a map of the enclosed area and military issued rations, among other items."

Another soldier emerged from below carrying a cardboard box, in which the students could hear loose objects clanging against each other. Saito withdrew a black rectangular device from within and tapped the glossy black screen. "This is new technology, sophisticated equipment. In this box are special trackers made of an extremely durable metal. Don't bother trying to cut it; you'll probably have better luck decapitating yourself. We'll monitor your progress with this device.

"Because you all might be a bit reluctant to kill each other, which is understandable, another rule became a last minute addition. If no one dies in…say, a day or so, the soldiers will march into a random area of the mountain and shoot whoever is there. That is to say, if there isn't a substantial amount of deaths, the military will have to intervene. Just keep in mind that we aren't stupid. We have ways of knowing whether or not you're dead, so sitting in one spot won't work either."

"As far as new technology goes, there's also a fence surrounding this area of the mountain. It's been useful for containing livestock, so don't touch the electrical fencing. If you do, you'll be burned alive by ten thousand volts of electricity." Natsume pressed against him in a most uncharacteristic manner, his face nearly buried in the crook of Seiji's neck. He didn't have the heart to push him away, nor to care about appearances. How many people were crying and hugging each other? No one had ever seen a person burned alive by a fence.

Before, they were all shivering in anticipation of an attack that may never come. But this time, the enemies were not the Americans across the sea or the imperialists desiring to annex Japan. The enemy was here in this clearing, within themselves, and within every person they called their friends or rivals.

"Should you try to escape the soldiers stationed on the mountain will shoot you. If there is more than one person alive by the end of the third day, the soldiers will also come in and shoot all of you. No one will survive. We don't want that," Saito shook his head. A foul bile slicked Seiji's throat. What was he saying about regretting this? It seemed more of a contrived regret than sympathy. "It's not like a game of Western chess. There are no checkmates."

Chess; it was a game he played once or twice in the classroom with his friends and a handful of times at home where his cousins had a set purchased from the city. Now that he thought about the human-like figurines, they did seem to emulate war. Kill the king to emerge as the victor.

Saito's face no longer matched the one in their memories. Already his image was fading away. "I'm sure you all understand. None of us are as big as the government. That has always been what we've lived by in our town. All we can do is comply with the world around us and sometimes it leads us down an unfortunate road and sometimes we emerge prosperous. It isn't in our control, so go out there and fight." Saito suddenly stood straight and bowed low at his waist to the crowd of frozen children. Such an action was unheard of.

"_Stop it! Stop mocking us!_" someone shrieked. The crowd tensed for a moment, muscles coiled as the buck prepared to lunge, except they had no antlers or rock-hard hooves. It was inevitable that the calm shatter sooner or later. They burst forth, most of them, but Seiji refused to move. He already knew the outcome, having experienced that surge of power followed by the utter pain of vulnerability, of knowing that you are not the master of your fate.

The soldiers fired at the ground in uncanny unison, raising clouds of grainy dust and screams from the people around him. To his surprise, Seiji found his own throat hoarse from screaming. Someone asked a question or _must_ have asked a question, because Saito suddenly brought this topic up and the crowd quieted:

"Your relatives have already been contacted about your participation in this program. Most, if not all, I imagine, would have cooperated. Would any of _you_ have wanted to oppose the government in this day and age? And if they did, the government handled that, just as they handle traitors or spies. They've all been told how much of an honor this is for you all who weren't able to join the war." Seiji bit his lip guiltily; he hadn't even thought about his parents in this confusion. The fear had been all he could focus on.

"I guess we're almost ready. I'm going to call you all by your class numbers. You remember those, don't you? Go to one of those soldiers and he'll outfit you with your new collar and give you a bag. We'll also be sending out announcements via radio at intervals of six hours, letting you know who has died so far and how the 'game' is shaping up. Since this is government-sanctioned, we'll be using military time. You should also find a watch in the bags." Saito lifted his head as if suddenly recalling something important. Although the weather today was fairly cool, sweat coated his bare forehead.

"I almost forgot to tell you: remember not to eat any plant or wild mushroom unless you know it's edible. Some of the types are hard to distinguish even by professionals, so be careful." It was such a normal warning that some people stiffened. _Go and kill each other, but be careful not to eat poisonous mushrooms._

Seiji finally came out of his trance long enough to take a good look at those soldiers, biting his lip when he saw young faces underneath those hard hats. There were a few older, middle-aged men, but some were his brother's age or younger. Each had a level, emotionless persona plastered on their faces, as if they were about to wage war against enemy soldiers instead of watching their countrymen kill each other. And they were kids, no less.

"Okay, Asakura Yukio, you may go. Wherever you want is fine, just make sure you don't hang around for too long. The soldiers were ordered to shoot anyone they found," Saito said. The tempo stepped up and fell into an even pattern so entrancing that Seiji found himself drifting away as he watched ten classmates disappear into the trees. They would head over, bare their necks at gunpoint, have that strange band of metal fastened on them, and run away with a bag. They stumbled, cried, cursed, and silently accepted their fates. Everyone was different.

Would they truly participate in this game? It mocked the fundamental meanings of the words "loyalty" and "patriotism". During the war, the government could have given them a plane and directed them to commit suicide anywhere in the wide ocean, and many of them might have gladly, solemnly, obeyed without protest. Heading off to war was not a punishment, but an honor, and a sacrifice for the country's safety their ultimate duties. But this was not war. They weren't spies or enemy imperialists.

They had grown up together, worked together, and found love amongst each other. They had just begun to forget their differences again. They never protested the government, and their school was on the edge of collapse. Seiji gnawed at his lower lip. People had always said they dealt with their lots in life because there were no other options, but how could be believe this? This was not something they could quietly endure until it ended.

Hisoka stepped away from the girls he had been talking to since Seiji left. His friend's distinctive figure crossed before his quivering eyes. His hands were clenched, strands of hair obscuring his face. Were those tears trickling down his cheeks or was anger shining out of his eyes? He couldn't see. It was painful watching him leave, despite the fact that Seiji came next in their seating arrangement. Hisoka might leave before him, and how would he find him in this wide expanse of forest? And Natsume – Natsume was almost at the end of the list.

Truthfully, Seiji wasn't sure that he _could_ trust his other classmates. After all, war had a tendency to distort people, and the closer to their personal safety it struck, the worse the person degraded. A handful of times in their town, when people were starving or beyond paranoid of Allied bombings, people had become that desperate. They could be downright monsters in wartime. Hadn't the Americans wanted to incinerate entire cities? It was only by luck that Japan had managed to escape that unscathed and win the war.

His brother had told him enough stories from his hospital bed. The limits living beings went to in order to live were far and long, almost boundless. When it came down to it, each and every one of them had known that death was inevitable during those wartime years. And now fate had snuck up on them, regardless of their faith in the way things were and had always been.

"Kimura Seiji," Saito called.

The gods were just. "Pray to them and they will return your faith with prosperity" or "Save a fox's life and it will repay you when you need it the most". The adults had always taught them that hadn't they? Even though their world was slowly moving away from old faith in the Shinto religion, their elders sometimes mentioned it. Seiji had been like the other children of the modern generations, and had seriously prayed only when the war grew worse. Eventually, he stopped praying when he lost hope. Perhaps karma had come to collect.

The cold metal collar snapped together over the rise of his throat. As his eyes shifted upwards, a soldier shoved a bag into his hands and pushed his shoulder away. He was torn. Find Hisoka or hide and wait for Natsume? He had to pick one or else he might not get either friend.

The trembling fear in Natsume's eyes decided for him. Hisoka might not have been stronger than them, but he had maintained his composure and Natsume was from the city anyways. While they might not have had much experience surviving in the wilderness (he didn't have any at all), this was still their home terrain, of sorts. He darted off into the trees and didn't stop until the clearing was out of sight. He could hardly feel the animalistic fear pulsating through him anymore, which meant that this was definitely not a dream.

Given the general confusion, their class fragmented as they drove deeper into the forest, as far away from the line of fire as possible. There were people they had wanted to wait for and others they would rather avoid, but in the thick forest this was an impossibly difficult task. There were those they could trust without a doubt and those they wouldn't want to approach with a ten meter stick, but this tenant didn't work in the midst of chaos.

Though, the forest did seem tragically calm in spite of this. It was that literary device known as irony rearing its ugly head, or so the saying went.

* * *

><p>Honda Ayako liked people. She wasn't the type to incessantly chatter, like Kawasaki Hisoka, but she enjoyed the company of others. She was proud to call herself adaptive to most conversations, so unless she had a serious disagreement with someone, she could usually talk about a subject neutrally. For a person like her, indefinite silence grew increasingly annoying and unnerving after awhile. Although her household was noisy and she often screamed at her little siblings for their disruptive clamor, she didn't prefer silence once it found her.<p>

She had wanted to wait for _someone_. Even if the worst possible scenario occurred, she had wanted to try trusting the people she grew up with. It might have been a daunting task for even her, and she might have snapped in frustration, but she really wanted to keep human company. That hadn't happened, so she ended up traversing the kills and slopes left of the clearing alone. She checked her map and the compass with the general direction she ran in, but the forest was void of many outstanding landmarks. A few unlabeled dots spotted the glossy map.

She had been walking for quite some time when she finally reached an area of lower ground and hilly earth, shaded a different shade on the map. She definitely traveled in the opposite direction of the little town near the shrine, which was probably a farming community quite like their own. She wondered if people still lived there, but that was unlikely given the circumstances. The mountain was empty. It was a pretty mountain, but also big. It might take an entire day to travel all the way around, and she couldn't see the summit due to the thick fog that had settled over it.

Ayako yanked her hairpins out and rearranged them for convenience instead of looks, pinning back the locks that framed her face. Her hair was short, cut around the shoulders in a straight cut, so she wasn't worried about it getting caught in branches. If she had long hair, she would definitely hack it off now. It was impractical in general, especially while doing housework, even if it might have looked prettier and more refined.

She had trudged through a great deal of the hilly forests, too cautious to emerge from the thicket's protection, when she realized that she had no destination. She wasn't looking for anyone in particular, but there were hardly even animals in sight. At the same time, she was reluctant to find her classmates. There were always times when being alone worked to one's advantage. She stopped and stood against a tree for a long time. It was old and wider than her shoulders or hips, its bark ridged as if a dull knife had been repeatedly dragged across the surface. She yanked the navy blue tie from her sailor suit and shoved it in her bag, and released a sudden grunt of annoyance.

She had been on the verge of skipping this trip due to the cost and her responsibilities, but her older brother and Fujita Kiyoshi had conspired together and convinced her to come. There were so many things she had to fix at home and her older brother was useless in those situations. The idea of him trying to control the household for a week, let alone indefinitely, was hilarious and insane. Unlike her, he commanded no respect from their siblings.

It scared her that she had considered her own death so suddenly like that, as if it were a concrete fact that she would never return. Ayako shivered, though her white blouse already clung to her skin from the heat in the forest. Never mind going crazy from little siblings; that was nothing compared to this situation. She shouldn't be thinking about how her brother was inept at everyday skills such as cooking or repairing clothes. Their siblings would torment him because he was a stranger to them and they would skip school and ruin the house.

Her brother was a good person. He tried as hard as he could, but he was a guy. He had never been raised to do such tasks, and could only do so much, so he relied on her a lot for certain things. When he couldn't take it anymore, he might do something stupid. Of course he wouldn't burden the family with it, just like his sister Ayako, but she worried for him, too. The house would (literally) fall apart without her.

She really should have been worrying about herself first. Thinking about home only made her chest burn and itch.

Perhaps it wasn't so bad to be alone. The mountain was big, she supposed, and the forest was thick. Was it possible to wander around without encountering other people? It seemed hard to imagine. Even though in their small town it was easy to find places to be alone, it was hard to remain alone for long. Someone always passed by eventually. Here, it seemed as if the unexpected human presence had scared all but the insects away.

* * *

><p>Even if they had wanted to unite, in this situation self-preservation overrode any emotions they might have held before, so relatively few of them had the chance to find their friends. The forest's thick vegetation made it almost impossible to seek out a specific person discreetly. If the class had really wished for unity, this wouldn't have been an issue, but they didn't trust each other. There was no confusion about that. They never had completely trusted each other from the beginning.<p>

If they couldn't look at their neighbors and force their prejudices away, how could they trust them in this situation?

And most of them by this time had no doubt that this was a real, living nightmare. The numbness might have still had some control over them, but those guns solidified their situation more than any adult's words could have done. If those guns hadn't been there and Saito had told them this same information, people would have laughed and turned away. "Isn't this just one of Saito's silly novels again? It must be foreign, right?" they might have joked.

It didn't need to be Saito telling them the rules to this "game". It could have been their parents or siblings and it would have stricken them with the same earth-shattering reality.

Fujita Kiyoshi had watched his terrified, furious classmates trickle into the forest one by one with this increasing awareness. His surname placed him as the last male student with one female to follow him. Ayako had no time, patience, or bravery to wait for him, and Morioka Mikie was the fifteenth female student. She was a nice girl when she didn't have that scowl on her face, but Kiyoshi had stolen from her family. Albeit, it was quite some time ago, but a mutual agreement had always gone unsaid between the two of them.

Kiyoshi slowed only when a deep but shallow stream broke the ground before him. He hadn't heard any signs of human life, though he did spot a single bird on the way, despite there being twenty-eight students out there. Perhaps those rustling sounds _were_ his classmates, but they could also have very well been frightened animals. Either way, he was alone by this stream and had no idea where on the map it was. His palpitating heart prevented him from thinking beyond little bursts of skittishness. He didn't know whether to pause or to run until he collapsed.

Finally he chose to slacken his pace, relaxing a little as he picked his way downstream to lower ground. The fissure was thin; an easy bound would clear it without expending much effort. It was half a meter high at most, darkened soil composing the walls and floor of the tiny tunnel. The water was the color of the dirt. Kiyoshi settled into a heavily shaded bend in the stream laced in shadows and branches. The entire area was shadowy, casting a strange green film over his surroundings.

A sensible person would take stock of their situation before taking action, without expending any unnecessary energy. Kiyoshi had gained a lot more common sense since he was a kid, so he didn't bother becoming flustered over unchangeable matters. What mattered was that he was alone. If he went to find people, he would waste his energy traveling around the entire mountain, and he might not even find a friend. Kiyoshi only went halfway through this tenant, taking stock of certain aspects while neglecting others.

He shrugged off his black school uniform jacket and scooted further into the leafy area underneath the lowest branches. A solid black form in broad daylight, even this half light, would catch the eye. The pants couldn't be helped, of course. Kiyoshi rustled through his military issued bag, finding the rations and map, a compass, a watch, all of the promised items. The extraneous ones were the two heavy, metal oblong spheres rolling along the bottom of his bag. The dark grey surface was cold to the touch and indented with deep grooves, cutting rectangles around it.

He carefully replaced the grenades in the bag. _At least it wasn't a sword,_ he thought. It would have been the ultimate irony. He most certainly would have no chance of even injuring a person using a sword in close combat with the same finesse and calculated detachment as a professional killer. He and Fujita Goro were worlds apart.

It suddenly struck him: _I just considered killing my classmates. With a sword it would be implausible, but I thought about it. I thought about it as if it mattered._ Perhaps it was the forest's peaceful veil, but these thoughts only served to rile him up a little. He was horrified that such thoughts had crossed his mind, but he didn't even move. This seemed less intimidating than the constant anxiety and fear of being bombed during the night. Maybe this was due to the fact that no one had faced bodily harm yet, he thought.

What was the point of this? If the government really wanted to get rid of the kids, why not shoot them and save the time? It was possible that this was run like a business, he supposed, and how could anyone object to corporations and politicians making massive amounts of money? He wasn't quite sure how they could profit from sending kids off to kill each other, but didn't have the chance to develop these ideas much further either. He hadn't noticed it until the trees on the opposite side of the stream parted to the solid black of a boy's uniform.

It was Sakuma Kosuke. It was the same Sakuma Kosuke that never spoke in class discussions and whose shop Ayako's father worked in after the war. Kiyoshi had known this boy all his life, of course, but in reality _knew_ very little about him. He had never before cared to become acquainted with him and their paths rarely crossed. Despite how close in proximity they lived, he couldn't recall ever having spoken to this boy in his life. Ayako had held a few conversations with him, but they were apparently pointless, bland talks about the weather or his family's shop.

Kiyoshi's chest stung in pain at the thought. It was unreasonable, he understood, because despite his worry, Ayako was not a flower from the city. He had always protected her, but only because she had allowed herself to be protected.

Neither boy had moved; neither boy had dared to break the silent agreement. "Sakuma-san…" Kiyoshi said haltingly, as if those few syllables were hard to pronounce. His tense muscles ached and his blunt fingernails dug into the soft moss and grass that grew in longs strands over the ledge. This strange, translucent veil draped over the languid branches above his head stalled his thoughts and his body, and he couldn't help but think equally strange thoughts.

"…Sakuma-san, you're not here to kill me, are you?" He hated his rash mouth for speaking things in ways he did not want them to be spoken. His self-control over his body was impeccable by now, but his mouth had yet to master the art of subtlety. Perhaps people would find him less harsh if he simply reworded his phrases, but these direct comments came naturally to him.

Sakuma Kosuke was not very tall, but he was thinner and bonier than most of the people Kiyoshi knew, even through his school clothes. The memory was faint, but Kiyoshi could recall a time when that boy had not been so skinny, when he had actually possessed a full, childish face that sometimes smiled. Unlike most, he didn't seem to have gained any weight since the war ended. His limbs were long and spidery, and these features were on the verge of appearing out-of-place on his body.

It was impossible to gauge his strength based on these observations, though. Not to mention the strength of his mind. Even a small, lanky snake without limbs and possessing a beast's instincts could kill a man.

"You?" he said as he stepped forward. There seemed to be no weapon in his hand. "No, I'm not here to kill you. I have no reason to want to kill you. And you have no reason to want to kill me. But the _government _said that we have to kill, and so we have to kill _someone_. Whatever the government says is law. That's what school is for, right? It teaches you that the government is right."

Kiyoshi hardly heard the second half of that speech. With narrowed eyes he asked, "Who _do_ you want to kill, if not me? And why wouldn't I want to kill you?" He realized that sounded bad the moment it left his mouth, but he didn't retract his question. Kiyoshi never retracted his statements, however far from the truth they were.

"Well, we were all born in Akiyama, weren't we? If it weren't for people like them, we wouldn't have gone to war and Japan wouldn't have needed to pass a law like this. Even the richest in our town before the war couldn't possibly compare to the wealth other people have. So it's obvious, isn't it? When has the government _ever_ done something for _our kind, huh?_ Definitely not when they kill our brothers, fathers, cousins, lovers, whatever, and say, 'be happy that they died in honor'!" Sakuma's voice rose into the treetops past the veil, dispersing into the expanse of untouched air.

He stepped forward as he spoke so that the worn tips of his shoes were at the edge of the small ledge. "Even our teachers who escaped from the draft and taught us…it's a filthy thing to comply with. Wouldn't it be an 'honorable death' if they resisted? Instead, they just sweat and send us off here, pretending that they were our friends all along."

Kiyoshi wasn't sure how it happened, because he didn't trust Sakuma and didn't agree with his words, but he ended up with no choice except to follow him through the forest. It wasn't like he had a better plan and he wasn't in immediate danger, so he went with it.

Kill the foreigners. Resist the government dogs. It sounded suspiciously like a history lesson.

* * *

><p><em>The last time she saw her brother, she had been a child herself. The children had a mere speck of a memory left about him, and he often went unmentioned in conversation, compared to her father. The children had a very clear image of their father as nurtured by their ailing mother, so when he returned home it was as if he had departed on a long vacation instead of marking off to war. They had arrived home in different months, and in fact her father had no idea whether or not his son was alive, so he went unmentioned even then.<em>

_The injury her father had sustained crippled him; he worked from Sakuma Kosuke's family in the shop they owned near the more populated area of town. After the war, working this type of menial desk job with light labor was the only option open to him. Plus, as he'd said to the family multiple times, the Sakuma's lost both their eldest son and husband. Their surviving son couldn't manage all that work by himself. It must have been a heavy burden on that child, so her father said as he went to work without complaint._

_They had fallen into a quiet routine when her brother returned home. Her parents had been ecstatic and cried over his head with only the deepest type of relief possible, but her siblings had only rudely asked at the same time, "Who is he?"_

_Not remembering their older brother was a shock, but after they thought about it, it was only to be expected. And whether it made matters worse or better, he had to stay home instead of working, too. He had been deployed to the Pacific and been injured by a stray bullet and shrapnel, sustaining nonlethal wounds that rendered him physically weak. It would require time to rebuild his strength and muscles, so the doctors had advised against hard labor for now. In other words, he had to do the same housework that Ayako always took care of since her mother fell ill._

_It had been a disaster at first._

_She could recall every incident with a pleasant clarity, because she could laugh all she wanted, and her brother was still there at the end of the day. He slept in his old room, which had been converted into a storage room, so he did sleep with the boxes, brooms, and dust, but at least he was home. Even if their siblings would chase him with sticks and kick him in the shins at random intervals, the two eldest always laughed it off._

_About the only time he had been able to make a jibe against her was when he noticed her new hairstyle. Having previously been long, it didn't take him much time to note the distinctly short cut. It just managed to touch her shoulders now, and she intended to keep it that way "because it doesn't get in the way anymore". He laughed and she laughed and it was alright. She didn't retort because she had so many other things to tease __**him**__ about now._

"_You've handled a gun but you can't chop vegetables without cutting yourself?"_

"_Aha, I guess not," he'd replied sheepishly. A thin string of blood welled from his calloused finger._

"_Hey, don't mop yourself into the corner! How're you supposed to get out now? You'll fall all over the place if you try crossing." It was probably the only time in her life that she got to tease her older brother like this._

_Sometimes, she didn't tease him, though. Like when their siblings scolded him for dressing them in the wrong manner or for putting an object where it didn't belong. It was more of a sad, forlorn image that his taller figure emitted. It was slightly dejected, not something to joke around about. She might have felt as if she viciously kicked a puppy to eat for dinner. It did happen._

"_Aha, I'm so tired. Why does doing the laundry hurt so much?" he whined one evening after dinner as he slumped on the couch. Ayako prodded him with the wooden laundry basket in her hands containing the unfolded clothes, helpless to the smirk that crossed her lips. To dry them in time to fold them at night, they had wrung the clothes out until almost all of the water was gone this morning. It worked the back muscles, apparently._

"_Don't be such a crybaby. Get folding or get healed and get out and work."_

_Then, one of the not-so-funny-things was her little sister's passing comment one morning as they were preparing the little ones for school in the cramped entryway._

"_When's big brother going to go home?" she asked. She was six, so what did she know? Calling him "big brother" was like calling Sakuma Kosuke or Fujita Kiyoshi a "big brother" by the principle that he was older. Her siblings probably thought that Kiyoshi was more of a "brother" than their blood relative._

_Ayako had grown up with a lot of siblings. She was tough and had to be so, but even then, she usually reserved one sad, pitiful smile for her brother at the end of the day. It didn't matter if it was inappropriate._

* * *

><p>• I'm not completely satisfied with this chapter, even though I've rewritten it already...It also kept on getting longer with no end in sight. Hopefully it's not too terrible.<p>

• The last line is a reference to the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate during the Meiji Revolution where there were two warring factions. One side for the phrase "_sonno joi_", which meant "revere the emperor, expel the barbarians". The other side fought to maintain the shogunate. Those supporting the shogun were known as the _bakufu_, and are popularly called _bakufu dogs_ in literature about the time period.

• Some of the rules are different, of course, because this is the year 1947 after all. The schematics aren't so sophisticated yet, so there are no danger zones and the collars don't explode. Also note that this mountain they chose is fairly large in size, probably bigger than the island in Battle Royale. (This is obviously something they will change later as the years go by.)

• "The Land Upon Which the Sun Sets" is a reference to the series _Hetalia_, surprisingly, referring to China as a type of passive insult, seeing as Japan is the "land of the rising sun".


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